Sunday, March 13, 2016

Terrorist Nashat Milhem had planned an attack on kindergartens in Tel Aviv, Police said Sunday, as they released their findings of an investigation into the attacks on New Year’s Day in Tel Aviv.
News of the Milhem’s plan to attack daycare centers was included in a 6-part Police report sent by power point to reporters on Sunday, which was compiled in cooperation with the Shin Bet. The report covered a series of controversial aspects of the week-long manhunt for Milhem, including police failure to put out a picture of Milhem until 36 hours after the attack, the shortage of clear messages to the public from the senior police leadership, and news that the police failed to properly heed a 100 dispatch call from witnesses who stated they saw Milhem heading north on a bus to Wadi Ara shortly after the killing.
Police said in their findings that they did determine there were deficiencies in how the 100 dispatch center handled calls by two sisters hours after the attack who said they saw Milhem heading north to Wadi Ara on a bus, but that it didn’t negatively affect the investigation. According to a senior police official, by then police were already searching for Milhem and his accomplices in his Wadi Ara village of Ar’ara. That said, he did admit that they were only able to actually confirm he was there on Tuesday, meaning that it was only five days after the 100 calls were placed that they were able to prove he was in the village.
The report added that they learned that there were failures in how the 100 dispatch centers from different areas share information, and that they need to improve their technology in order to make the system more effective.The police report said they did insufficiently inform the public about the ongoing manhunt and how they should conduct themselves, but said it was only a matter of hours, not days. On the day of the shooting, no police briefing was given by a senior officer at the scene of the attack until hours later, which police admitted Sunday was problematic.

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas hailed a Palestinian who attempted to kill an Israeli soldier with her car as a “martyr.”
“We see in her a martyr who watered the pure earth of Palestine with her blood,” Abbas wrote in a letter to the parents of Amani Husni Sabatin, who was shot after she rammed her vehicle into a soldier in the Gush Etzion Junction near Jerusalem on March 4. Her funeral in the town of Husan near Bethlehem was reportedly attended by hundreds of Palestinians.A similar condolence letter sent in 2014 by Abbas to the family of Mu’taz Hijazi, the Palestinian suspected in the attempted assassination of Temple Mount activist Yehuda Glick, described Hijazi as a “martyr” who died “while he was defending the rights of our people and our holy places.”
Leading PA officials, including Abbas, have often been accused of inciting violence and glorifying Palestinians who carry out attacks against Israelis. Abbas consoled families of terrorists—including the relatives of a man who hacked a Jerusalem rabbi to death in October—during two separate meetings last month, calling the attackers “martyrs.” The first meeting took place hours after three Palestinian men gunned down an Israeli policewoman in Jerusalem. Fatah, the party led by Abbas, praised the shooters as “role models.”

PA official to terrorists: "You are heroes, crown on our head"

Deputy Secretary of the Fatah Central Committee, Jibril Rajoub:‎ "I say to the Israelis first of all: You sons of bitches, we will not accept less than a ‎Palestinian state. We are the owners of the land, and we are the residents of the land ‎and you are strangers in the land... Our relations with the occupation need to be first of ‎all on a basis of clashes – until a Palestinian state is established. Do not believe in ‎‎[Israeli Prime Minister] Netanyahu, he is a liar and a scoundrel, and he’s a Fascist and ‎represents the new Nazism... From here we say to the 145 Martyrs (Palestinians killed ‎in the Oct. 2015 - Jan. 2016 terror wave, most during terror attacks –Ed.) – You are ‎heroes and we bless you and strengthen your families, and say to you: You are a ‎crown on our heads.‎" [Official PA TV, Jan. 6, 2016‎]

Yesh Atid party leader Yair Lapid has called on a global press union to apologize for censuring Israel over the closure of a West Bank TV station.The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) on Friday condemned Israel’s closure a day earlier of Palestine al-Yawm (Palestine Today), a station Israeli officials say is linked to the Islamic Jihad terror group and incited against Israelis.
The Brussels-based IFJ, which claims to be the largest organization of its kind, slammed what it called “the brutal attack against free press” and asked the UN for an “immediate reaction to the escalation of attacks against the press in the occupied territories.”
IFJ President Jim Boumelha said “We cannot tolerate these continuous attacks from Israeli authorities to muzzle Palestinian press. Incitement of terror is a dangerous accusation to make against a media and a decision to close it down cannot occur without due process.”
In a letter to Boumelha on Saturday, Lapid wrote: “Yesterday, after the channel was closed down members of the military wing of Islamic Jihad held a rally protesting the closure. Islamic Jihad used Palestine Today to incite against Israel and encourage others to carry out attacks. The manager of station has been convicted of being a member of Palestinian Islamic Jihad. The connection is so patently obvious that it calls into question your motives in condemning Israel’s actions.”

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday charged that as the ruler of the Gaza Strip, the Hamas terrorist organization was responsible for any rockets fired at Israel from inside the Palestinian territory.“Israel holds Hamas responsible for all firing carried out from the Gaza Strip toward Israel; Hamas must prevent such firing,” he said at the weekly cabinet meeting.
On Friday evening, four rockets launched from within the Palestinian territory landed in an open field near the southern Israeli city of Sderot. No injuries or damage were reported. Hours later, Israeli jets struck Hamas targets in the Gaza Strip.
While Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon said Saturday that Hamas was not seeking to escalate hostilities and likely did not launch Friday’s rockets, Netanyahu made clear the IDF would continue to “respond to any such provocations.”“Our policy in regard to the Gaza Strip is clear: Israel will not tolerate any rocket fire from Gaza toward Israel,” the prime minister said Sunday.

An Australian Broadcasting Corporation article “Gaza siblings killed in air strike after rockets hit Israel” leads with the following paragraph:A 10-year-old Palestinian boy and his six-year-old sister have been killed in an Israeli airstrike on their home while they were sleeping, in retaliation for militants firing rockets into Israel.
Israel did indeed “retaliate” for the Hamas rocket attack. The IDF’s retaliation was to attack Hamas targets in the area. A tragic, but unintentional consequence of the strike was that these two children, who live next to a Hamas training camp, were killed. But the article implies that Israel purposefully killed the children as revenge — a gross distortion of what happened.
We have contacted ABC and await their response. But you can help too.

Many of us who read the Guardian’s headline accompanying a Reuters report last night on a Gaza rocket attack on southern Israel, and the Israeli Air Force’s (IAF) subsequent response, were surprised how relatively fair and accurate it was.
As the report notes in the second paragraph, the incident began on Saturday when terrorists in Gaza launched rockets into southern Israel. In response the IAF targeted four Hamas terror training camps. Two Palestinian children, who lived close to the terror base, were reportedly killed by missile fragments that struck the Hamas military target.
Here’s the original Guardian headline:

It isn’t a perfect headline, but it at least clearly explains that the Israeli air strikes were prompted by a Gaza rocket attack.
However, at some point after the article was published, editors changed the headline and strap line.
Here’s how it looks now:

So, the important context about the IAF strike which appeared in the original headline (the rocket attack from Gaza) was removed, and relegated to the strap line.
Additionally, note the change in words to describe the Palestinian victims to suggest greater Israeli responsibility. In the original, we’re told merely that “a Gaza boy dies“, whilst in the revised headline editors make clear that “Israel kills“.

More than $35,000 has been donated to help pay for the funeral of Taylor Force, the Texas native who was killed in a Palestinian stabbing attack in Israel this week.
The GoFundMe account, created on Wednesday with the goal of raising $10,000 for Force’s funeral expenses, surpassed the original target within the first day. The account was created by Brian Modisett, who was Force’s friend and classmate at the Vanderbilt Owen Graduate School of Business, located in Nashville, Tenn.“The outpouring of support the Owen community has received today from our GoFundMe campaign shows us just how many lives Taylor touched and how much he meant to his family and friends,” Modisett told The Tab. “Taylor made me a better man and I will forever be grateful that he was my friend.”
Force, a US Army veteran and Vanderbilt University graduate student, was in Israel on a school trip when the terrorist attack took place on Tuesday in Jaffa, south of Tel Aviv. His funeral will be held on Monday in his hometown of Lubbock, Texas, according to a message posted on the GoFundMe account. The Austin, Texas news station KXAN said a memorial service for Force is planned at Vanderbilt University, but details have not been released to the public.

The Shin Bet, together with the IDF, has seized dozens of homemade weapons and gun-making equipment in Palestinian cities in the West Bank over the past few months, the security service announced on Sunday.
During one raid on Saturday, Shin Bet officers confiscated 15 rifles that had been hidden in the Yabad village, outside Jenin.The officers learned of the weapons’ locations after interrogating a gunsmith they had arrested and questioned earlier, the service said.
On March 1, security forces conducted a similar raid in Nablus, seizing guns, bullets and weapon-making equipment.

A senior Islamic Jihad official called upon followers to carry out mass murder of Jews “inside their settlements”, during a mass demonstration the group held on Friday.
The Islamic terror group, which killed hundreds of Israelis in suicide bombings and shooting attacks across the country, is now pushing for a new wave of attacks.
Ahmed al-Modallal spoke at the rally, rejected condemnations by the United States and European Union, saying that “The Americans and Europeans won’t stop this intifada, which will continue to strike at the heart of the occupation”.
Al-Modallal called upon the Islamic faithful in Jerusalem and Judea and Samaria to organize mass attacks “in the heart of [Israeli] settlements”.
“We call on our people in Jerusalem and Judea and Samaria to send out groups to block the Occupation’s roads and settlers, and to strike at the settlements with thousands [of terrorists]; let the arms of the Mujahedeen strike at the heart of the settlers, so that these criminals will know they will never be safe on Palestinian land.”

Hanan Ashrawi, a senior member of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) Executive Committee, held a series of meetings with top officials and lawmakers in Washington DC last week, according to a PLO press release on Saturday.The PLO is a terrorist organization that had international recognition as such removed in the 1994 Oslo Accords, although it never renounced terrorism. The group maintains its pro-terror stance, with one PLO official last October calling the murder of Jews a "national duty."
During her visit to Washington, Ashrawi first met with Anne Patterson, Assistant Secretary of the Bureau of Near East Affairs, Frank Lowenstein, Special Envoy for Israeli-Palestinian Negotiations, Chris Henzel, Director of Israel-Palestinian Affairs, and Andrew Lederman, Political Officer of Israel-Palestinian Affairs, according to Palestine News Network.In the meeting Ashrawi called for American support for a French initiative to force concessions on Israel or else recognize "Palestine" - a plan that France's new foreign minister has toned down. She also called for America to press Israel to stop its legal naval blockade on Gaza that is meant to prevent the influx of weapons.
Ashrawi then met with Senator Jeff Merkley (D-OR) and accused Israeli of trying to "destroy" the two state solution dividing the Jewish state, through "settler violence and terrorism, extrajudicial killings...and settler attacks against Christian and Muslim holy sites."

In a showdown at the plenary of the UNHRC, China, Russia, Cuba, Pakistan and Venezuela tried to silence Hillel Neuer for questioning the membership of dictatorships on the Human Rights Council. However, USA, Britain, Netherlands, Canada defended UN Watch's right to speak. When the Chair finally gave Mr. Neuer back the floor, with only 3 seconds left on the clock, he replied: "They can censor at home, but they cannot censor us at the United Nations." Human rights activists burst out in applause. Cuba complained again — yet the Chair rejected Cuba's complaint, and moved on. On this day, the dictators lost at the U.N. (March 11, 2016.)

Israel denied an entry permit to the Foreign Minister of Indonesia Retno Marsudi, a move which prevented her from meeting with her Palestinian counterpart Riyad al-Malki in Ramallah as planned on Sunday.The Indonesian minister was also scheduled to inaugurate the first honorary Indonesian consulate in the Palestinian territories.
Israel refused to grant Marsudi an entry visa from Jordan to the West Bank, because the Indonesian Foreign Minister had no plans to also meet with Israeli officials.
Israel and Indonesia do not have formal diplomatic ties.
Instead Malki traveled to Jordan to meet with Marsudi, according to sources in the PA Foreign Ministry.The sources said that Malki decided to go to Amman “out of appreciation for the historic and special ties between the State of Palestine and Indonesia.”The sources pointed out that Indonesia has been very supportive of Palestinian issues, especially in international forums.

Jeremy Corbyn has held at least 15 meetings – including four since he became Labour leader – with a leading figure from Finsbury Park mosque who blames Britain for Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (Isil), has called for the destruction of Israel and appeared to praise the recent wave of terrorist stabbings in that country.
Mr Corbyn has spoken of his “friendship” with the “legendary” Mohammed Kozbar, chairman of the mosque and vice-president of the Muslim Association of Britain, which is closely linked to the Islamist Muslim Brotherhood.
Mr Kozbar claims that the Finsbury Park mosque, formerly notorious as the base of Abu Hamza, has turned over a new leaf under his leadership. Mr Corbyn, too, has praised it as a “wonderful place” which “guides me and many others”.
But in a demonstration in December 2011 Mr Kozbar called for the destruction of Israel, saying: “This time it will be the end of Israel, inshallah [God willing.]”On October 11 last year, amid a wave of stabbings of Israelis by Palestinians in Jerusalem and elsewhere, he wrote that “Palestine is uprising, Alquds [Jerusalem] is uprising and our brothers and sisters are giving everything to defend Alaqsa Mosque [in Jerusalem]. The question is what are we doing to support them and show them that they are not alone on this.”

A major European student organization this week issued a sharp statement against campus antisemitism and the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel, The Jerusalem Post reported on Wednesday.“There are rising violent antisemitic attacks,” said the joint statement by the University of Vienna’s Green Party, Socialist Student Association and the Communists-Left List, “on, above all, American universities, which are connected to BDS and Israel Apartheid Week. Academic events from Jewish professors are regularly disrupted.”
Nor are American campuses alone in this, noted Camila Garfias, a member of the Socialist student group: “Antisemitic violence is part of daily life in Europe.” The joint statement asserted that Jews no longer felt safe in France, and that synagogues and business had been vandalized in Paris and in Germany.Karin Stanger, a student from the Green Party, added, “As a student organization at the University of Vienna, we condemn every form of antisemitism … and antisemitism in the new form of BDS.”
The three student groups issuing the statement form the governing coalition in the student parliament at the University of Vienna.

Former Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams has called on the government to act over the rise of antisemitism at British universities.Lord Williams, who is now master of Magdalene College, Cambridge, revealed that he had written to Jo Johnson, the universities ministers, because of what he called the “muted” official response to Jew-hatred on campuses.
His move follows allegations of antisemitism among members of Oxford University Labour Club and incidents at York and in London.
According to the Sunday Times, Lord Williams has been in contact with a Jewish student at York University, who had been the victim of antisemitic abuse.
In a letter to Zachary Confino, a law undergraduate, the former archbishop disclosed that he written to the government after being “very shocked” by a series of incidents.
He told Mr Confino: “It is truly appalling stuff but sadly seems not to be that unusual at the moment.”“It’s ironic that just as we are waking up to all sorts of ways in which ‘hate speech’ works we should lose sight of one of the most ancient and poisonous forms of it, in the shape of anti-semitic rhetoric.”

Campus antisemitism is a growing national problem, and, frighteningly, it has infected the City University of New York (CUNY) — historically a haven for Jews and other minorities seeking an excellent, affordable college education. We often work closely with students and others at CUNY, and we implore the leadership there to finally fix the problem before the verbal violence escalates into physical violence.
At recent CUNY rallies, a group that calls itself “Students for Justice in Palestine” (SJP) condemned “the Zionist administration” at CUNY for hosting Birthright Israel programs and study-abroad programs in “occupied Palestine” [i.e., Israel]. SJP demonstrators screamed insults at Jewish students, calling them “racists,” “white supremacists,” “Nazis” and “supporters of genocide.” They chanted, “There is only one solution: Intifada revolution!” — calling for murder and violence against Jews. They shouted invectives like “Jews out of CUNY” and “Jews are racist sons of bitches!” One Jewish student was screamed at by SJP members to “get the f –-k out of my country!” Another heard someone yell, “We should drag the Zionists down the street!” “Zionists,” of course, means Jews.
Even CUNY staff were aghast. One staff member described one of the rallies as “absolutely horrifying,” stating, “I have never witnessed anything like this before.”

Public school teachers in the West Bank were back at work Sunday morning after an intervention by Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas ended an almost month-long strike that has shuttered dozens of schools in the Palestinian territory.
Despite not all of their demands being met, the teachers union agreed to resume work on a temporary basis after Abbas pledged to improve working conditions in a televised speech on Saturday, Reuters reported.
“With pain squeezing our hearts, we can only thank President Mahmoud Abbas… he came up with some new offers, even though they have not fulfilled all our needs and demands,” the union said in a statement quoted in the report.Flanked by PA Prime Minister Rami Hamdallah, Abbas promised a 10 percent pay raise, a management review and the implementation of a 2013 work agreement, in his previously unscheduled Saturday address.
The average monthly salary for a teacher is $600. A school principal with a master’s degree and 25 years of service can earn $700.

Hamas is facing accusations of cronyism for giving preference to its own members during the very limited periods the Rafah Crossing, the Gaza Strip’s only gateway to the outside world, is open.
In 2015, the crossing was open for 26 days only, and for a mere three since the beginning of 2016.
Hamas, which rules Gaza, has come under fire for exploiting the population’s desperate desire to leave the territory, whether to receive medical treatment, work, or do business.Gaza residents told local media that Hamas officials charged them thousands of dollars to add their names or move them to the top of a waiting list, in order to make sure they can leave before the crossing closes arbitrarily.They blamed Hamas for giving preference to its members for ostensibly “humanitarian” reasons, when they are in fact perfectly healthy men traveling to Turkey or Malaysia to pursue their studies.
Hamas sources told Breitbart Jerusalem that over the last four years hundreds of members of the movement studied on scholarship in these countries, where they continue to train and be active on behalf of Hamas.They added that when Khaled Meshal visited Malaysia last December, he met with some 150 Hamas operatives studying there.

Palestinian Authority security personnel stand next to a landslide made by the seawater pumped into the area by the Egyptian army to flood Hamas tunnels near the border between Egypt and southern Gaza near Rafah. The bodies of two Hamas diggers who were buried alive in a Gaza tunnel collapse were finally pulled from the wreckage over the weekend.Hamas searchers found the corpses Saturday evening in the area of Rafah, the city that sits on Gaza’s southern border with Egypt.
The tunnel in which the hapless diggers were working had snaked its way under the border from Gaza to Egypt.The Egyptians have been flooding the tunnels to eliminate the smuggling and infiltration problems presented by Hamas and its allied terrorist groups in Gaza.

Hamas has been digging tunnels on the border of Egypt that are big enough to permit vehicles the size of trucks to go through, according to Egyptian security officials.
The tunnels connect the Gaza Strip with the Sinai Peninsula, and are being built in order to compensate for the tunnels which were flooded or blocked by the Egyptians.
These enormous tunnels, some of which stretch for over three kilometers, are designed to traverse the security zone Egypt set up between the border with Gaza and the Sinai. This security zone – which ranges between half a kilometer and a kilometer in length on the Egyptian side – has been cleared out of any buildings or people. The area has also been flooded in order to block the existing shafts into the tunnels.

Palestinian Cleric Known for Jihadi, Antisemitic Discourse Speaks out against the Culture of Death

Palestinian cleric Imad Hamtu participated in a Palestine TV panel dedicated to the alleged rise in suicide cases in Hamas-controlled Gaza. On the show, which aired on February 14, 2016, Sheikh Hamatu called to change the “death for the sake of Allah is our loftiest aspiration” motto. "Why can't our loftiest aspiration be life for the sake of Allah?" he asked, adding: “We want to live! Why do we always think in terms of the nihilistic logic of death? ” It is noteworthy, however, that Sheikh Hamatu has repeatedly spoken out in support of Jihad and is notorious for his antisemitic comments. In one case he said that he was “surprised to hear a preacher say that one must not fight the Jews or stab them,” and he criticized a mufti who said that “martyrdom operations” were in fact “suicide operations”

The Arab League's decision to designate Hezbollah as a terrorist organization will have no effect on the Lebanese Shiite group's popularity among Israeli Arabs, officials with the Hadash and Balad parties said on Saturday.
Balad and Hadash, together with Ra'am-Ta'al, comprise the Joint Arab List.
"The Arab League's Foreign Ministers Committee has decided to consider Hezbollah a terrorist organization," the Arab League announced Friday.
The decision followed a tumultuous meeting in Cairo, where the move to designate Hezbollah as a terrorist organization was led by the Saudi delegation, and backed by the Sunni countries, including Egypt, Jordan and the Persian Gulf emirates.The pan-Arab organization also condemned what it described as "continued Iranian interference in the internal affairs of Bahrain," the statement said, adding that Hezbollah, along with the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, financed and trained terrorist groups in Bahrain.
Saudi Ambassador to Egypt Ahmed Kattan said the Persian Gulf states would be taking further measures against Hezbollah.

Al-Jazeera reporter Faisal Al-Kassim posed the following question to his followers on Tweeter: According to the news, the US has warned Lebanon that Israel could launch a strike against the terrorist organization Hezbollah soon. If such an attack took place, which side would you support, Hezbollah or Israel?With a total of 15,643 votes cast, 26% said they would support Hezbollah, while a whopping 74% would be squarely behind Israel.
Apparently, there is no love lost in Sunni circles for the Shiite
movement, as the Arab League on Friday declared Hezbollah a “terrorist”
group, only days after the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) adopted the
same position. The Saturday vote came during an Arab League foreign
ministers’ meeting at their Cairo headquarters.Twenty out of 22 Arab League members supported the decision, with
Lebanon and Iraq expressing “reservations” for obvious reasons: Lebanon
because the Hassan Nasrallah led terrorists are in their midst in
Beirut, and Iraq because it is currently governed by the pro-Iran Shiite
majority.

A swastika was scratched into a statue at the University of Indianapolis, prompting an investigation and a strong message from the school's president.
In an email sent to students Tuesday morning, UIndy President Robert L. Manuel said he "was recently made aware that someone scratched a swastika on the bust of Chinese artist Au Ho-nien, located in Schwitzer Student Center."
Manuel said the vandalism is under investigation, and that the etching goes against the university's core values.
"UIndy has not and will never tolerate such behavior," Manuel said, adding that the symbol should remind students that the university is not "immune to intolerance and hate."The Indianapolis university wasn't the only school to be vandalized
with anti-Semitic symbolism this week. On Monday, a swastika and
anti-Semitic slur was found on a whiteboard in the American Studies
program at Purdue University.

Catholic high school students chanted, “You killed Jesus” at a basketball game against a predominantly Jewish high school in a Boston suburb on Friday night.
During the playoff contest between Catholic Memorial School and the public Newton North High School, fans of the latter began shouting, “Sausage fest!” at the opposing team, an off-color reference to the fact that CMS is an all-boys institution.
In response, the Catholic fans repeated, “You killed Jesus, you killed Jesus,” spectators at the event said.
The Catholic fans’ cheer was a reference to Jewish deicide, the charge that Jews are responsible for the death of Jesus Christ.“We are appalled at the behavior of some fans during Friday night’s game and are deeply concerned about why they thought this chant was appropriate at a high school basketball game,” Robert O. Trestan, director of the Anti-Defamation League’s New England Region, said in a statement.

A Donald Trump supporter shouted, “Go to Auschwitz!” at a rally for the leading Republican candidate in Kansas City, Missouri, on Saturday.In a video recorded by a Dutch reporter, the man appears to give a Nazi salute as he yells, “Go to Auschwitz! Go to f*cking Auschwitz!”Another Trump supporter also appears to give the “Heil Hitler” salute as she exits the stadium where the Republican candidate held his rally.
Police said they used pepper spray twice outside the Trump rally in Kansas City. Two people were also arrested in the aftermath of the event.

After more than a year of working with Israeli cyber-security start-up Cybereason, US aerospace and data protection firm Lockheed Martin officially released a cyber-security solution based on the Israeli firm’s technology.
“We often look to our partners to help shape and create best practices and products,” said Angie Heise, vice president, Lockheed Martin Commercial Cyber. “We have been working with Cybereason to do just that. Cybereason’s market-leading endpoint threat detection and response capabilities complement our cyber security offerings, providing customers a solution that is driven by our unique threat feed intelligence and enhanced by our powerful ‘analyst on demand’ program.”
Although known mostly for its defense and weapons work, Lockheed-Martin has a large information technology division – and in fact, the company is the number one IT solutions provider to the U.S. federal government. According to the company, its does nearly $9 billion in cyber-security business annually with clients in the private sector, government, and defense arena.

There are a lot of arguments to be made for the adoption of solar energy for electricity production, but with Israel still far behind on the goals it set for itself, according to solar expert Danny Denan, it appears that those arguments have still not made much of an impact on policy makers in the country. But like so much else in Israel, it is security that could finally give solar its well-deserved day in the sun as a major source of power.“Despite promises and commitments, the latest of which was made at the Paris climate conference last November, Israel still produces no more than a paltry 2.5% of its electricity from solar,” said Denan. “That the sun is free, or that at this point a kilowatt of electricity produced using solar technology is actually cheaper than a kilowatt from coal or gas, or that solar does not bring in its wake the pollution associated with fossil fuels has not been enough to turn away policy makers from their obsession with fossil fuels, especially gas.”
But the chairperson of Enerpoint Israel, the local division of the Italian solar giant, believes that even diehard fossil fuel fans in the government are ready to give solar a second look – and it’s all thanks to Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah.“Last month, Nasrallah threatened to blow up the Haifa ammonia storage facility with his missiles, but the Hadera electricity plant, which is just a bit south of the ammonia facility, is just as vulnerable. If the terrorists hit that site, Israel could be without electricity for a long time,” said Denan.

Israel Natural Gas Lines CEO Samuel Tordjman said today that pipeline in the Dead Sea area will be operational next year.The first natural gas pipeline to Jordan is scheduled to begin operating in 2017, Israel Natural Gas Lines CEO Samuel Tordjman announced today. The pipeline, currently being constructed in the Sdom area by the Dead Sea, will supply gas from the Tamar reservoir to private customers in Jordan. A second pipeline to be built in the Beit Shean area is due to supply gas from the Leviathan reservoir to the Jordanian National Electric Power Company (NEPCO).
In February, the Tamar partners signed a letter of intent with private customers in Jordan to supply 1.8 BCM over 10 years. In September 2014, the Leviathan partners also signed a letter of intent to supply 45 BCM of gas to NEPCO over 15 years; the value of the contract is estimated at over $15 billion. The discussions of the gas plan in Israel, however, which have been taking place for a year, have stalled the negotiations between the two countries.A report by the German Marshall Fund of the US about the Jordanian gas sector states, "In business terms, Jordan is an obvious market for Israeli gas. Pipeline distances are short; potential linkages between the Israeli pipeline network and Jordan’s are measured in mere tens of kilometers. The largest prospective customer, NEPCO, is a reliable partner with a reputation for ensuring its customers pay their bills." Furthermore, "In the future, gas supplies from Israel could be supplemented by gas from the Gaza Marine field."

Sergei Brezhnikov, 20, joined the Ukrainian "Children's Army" at age 16 • At 19, he made aliyah and enlisted in the IDF three months ago after studying Hebrew • Now he plans to start training as a medic • "In Israel, I'll have a better future," he says.
"Israel is my new home, and I see my future here, only," says Sergei Brezhnikov, 20, a lone IDF soldier who made aliyah from Ukraine.
Brezhnikov was born in the city of Vinnytsia, the only child of a single mother who was 19 when she had him. He had no contact with his father. At age 16, Brezhnikov enlisted in the Ukrainian army and served two years as a tank mechanic with what is known as the "Children's Army."
"I was a soldier in every sense of the word. In Ukraine, it's normal for 16-year-olds to serve in the army," Brezhnikov says, noting that was issued a uniform and a Kalashnikov rifle.
"Conditions were hard. We would sleep 200 soldiers to a room and they treated us pretty badly," he adds.When he completed his service at age 18, Brezhnikov started studying medicine with the hope of becoming a dentist, but after a year of university decided to emigrate to Israel.

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